Evolutionary fitness threats and rewards are associated with subjectively unpleasant and pleasant sensations, respectively. Initially, these correlations appear explainable via adaptation by natural selection. But here I analyse the major metaphysical perspectives on consciousness – physicalism, dualism, and panpsychism – and conclude that none help to understand the adaptive-seeming correlations via adaptation. I also argue that a recently proposed explanation, the phenomenal powers view, has major problems that mean it cannot explain the adaptive-seeming correlations via adaptation either. So the mystery – call it the evolutionary paradox of consciousness – remains. Some have used this mystery to argue for non-naturalistic (e.g. theistic) explanations. But I propose a naturalistic, non-adaptive explanation of the adaptive-seeming correlations: namely, ‘sensational associative learning’ during development. In this perspective, pairing of particular sensations with unconditioned stimuli – fitness rewards or threats – cause the sensations themselves to come to be interpreted as good or bad, respectively. Sensations, like colours, that are not reliably paired with either fitness rewards or threats remain largely unvalenced. Sensational associative learning also provides explanations for adaptive-seeming structural aspects of sensations, such as the observation that sounds of different pitch are experienced as ordinal in correspondence to their wavelengths while the same is not true of colours of different hue. The sensational associative learning perspective appears compatible with physicalism, panpsychism, and dualism (though not epiphenomenalism).

进化适应性威胁和奖励分别与主观不愉快和愉快的感觉相关。最初，这些相关性似乎可以通过自然选择的适应来解释。但在这里，我分析了关于意识的主要形而上学观点——物理主义、二元论和泛心论——并得出结论，没有一个观点有助于通过适应来理解看似适应性的相关性。我还认为，最近提出的解释，即现象权力观点，存在重大问题，这意味着它也无法通过适应来解释看似适应性的相关性。因此，这个谜团——称之为意识的进化悖论——仍然存在。有些人利用这个谜团来论证非自然主义（例如有神论）的解释。但我对看似适应性的相关性提出了一种自然主义的、非适应性的解释：即发展过程中的“感觉联想学习”。从这个角度来看，将特定的感觉与无条件刺激（健身奖励或威胁）配对会导致感觉本身分别被解释为好或坏。与健身奖励或威胁无法可靠配对的感觉（例如颜色）在很大程度上仍然是无价的。感觉联想学习还为感觉的看似适应性的结构方面提供了解释，例如观察到不同音调的声音被体验为与其波长相对应的序数，而不同色调的颜色则不然。感觉联想学习观点似乎与物理主义、泛心论和二元论（尽管不是副现象论）兼容。